A market town in the medieval period, Birmingham grew in the 18th-century Midlands Enlightenment and subsequent Industrial Revolution, which saw advances in science, technology, and economic development, producing a series of innovations that laid many of the foundations of modern industrial society.[14] By 1791 it was being hailed as "the first manufacturing town in the world".[15] Birmingham's distinctive economic profile, with thousands of small workshops practising a wide variety of specialised and highly skilled trades, encouraged exceptional levels of creativity and innovation and provided an economic base for prosperity that was to last into the final quarter of the 20th century. The Watt steam engine was invented in Birmingham.[16]

The resulting high level of social mobility also fostered a culture of political radicalism which, under leaders from Thomas Attwood to Joseph Chamberlain, was to give it a political influence unparalleled in Britain outside London, and a pivotal role in the development of British democracy.[17] From the summer of 1940 to the spring of 1943, Birmingham was bombed heavily by the German Luftwaffe in what is known as the Birmingham Blitz. The damage done to the city's infrastructure, in addition to a deliberate policy of demolition and new building by planners, led to extensive urban regeneration in subsequent decades.

People from Birmingham are called Brummies, a term derived from the city's nickname of "Brum", which originates from the city's old name, Brummagem, which in turn is thought to have derived from "Bromwich-ham".[24][25] The Brummieaccent and dialect are particularly distinctive.

History

Pre-history and medieval

Birmingham's early history is that of a remote and marginal area. The main centres of population, power and wealth in the pre-industrial English Midlands lay in the fertile and accessible river valleys of the Trent, the Severn and the Avon. The area of modern Birmingham lay in between, on the upland Birmingham Plateau and within the densely wooded and sparsely populated Forest of Arden.[26]

There is evidence of early human activity in the Birmingham area dating back to around 8000 BC,[27] with stone age artefacts suggesting seasonal settlements, overnight hunting parties and woodland activities such as tree felling.[28] The many burnt mounds that can still be seen around the city indicate that modern humans first intensively settled and cultivated the area during the bronze age, when a substantial but short-lived influx of population occurred between 1700 BC and 1000 BC, possibly caused by conflict or immigration in the surrounding area.[29] During the 1st-century Roman conquest of Britain, the forested country of the Birmingham Plateau formed a barrier to the advancing Roman legions,[30] who built the large Metchley Fort in the area of modern-day Edgbaston in AD 48,[31] and made it the focus of a network of Roman roads.[32]

Birmingham as a settlement dates from the Anglo-Saxon era. The city's name comes from the Old EnglishBeormingahām, meaning the home or settlement of the Beormingas – indicating that Birmingham was established in the 6th or early 7th century as the primary settlement of an Anglian tribal grouping and regio of that name.[33] Despite this early importance, by the time of the Domesday Book of 1086 the manor of Birmingham was one of the poorest and least populated in Warwickshire, valued at only 20 shillings,[34] with the area of the modern city divided between the counties of Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire.[35]

The development of Birmingham into a significant urban and commercial centre began in 1166, when the Lord of the Manor Peter de Bermingham obtained a charter to hold a market at his castle, and followed this with the creation of a planned market town and seigneurial borough within his demesne or manorial estate, around the site that became the Bull Ring.[36] This established Birmingham as the primary commercial centre for the Birmingham Plateau at a time when the area's economy was expanding rapidly, with population growth nationally leading to the clearance, cultivation and settlement of previously marginal land.[37] Within a century of the charter Birmingham had grown into a prosperous urban centre of merchants and craftsmen.[38] By 1327 it was the third-largest town in Warwickshire,[39] a position it would retain for the next 200 years.[40]

Early modern

The principal governing institutions of medieval Birmingham – including the Guild of the Holy Cross and the lordship of the de Birmingham family – collapsed between 1536 and 1547,[41] leaving the town with an unusually high degree of social and economic freedom and initiating a period of transition and growth.[42] By 1700 Birmingham's population had increased fifteenfold and the town was the fifth-largest in England and Wales.[43]

The importance of the manufacture of iron goods to Birmingham's economy was recognised as early as 1538, and grew rapidly as the century progressed.[44] Equally significant was the town's emerging role as a centre for the iron merchants who organised finance, supplied raw materials and traded and marketed the industry's products.[45] By the 1600s Birmingham formed the commercial hub of a network of forges and furnaces stretching from South Wales to Cheshire[46] and its merchants were selling finished manufactured goods as far afield as the West Indies.[47] These trading links gave Birmingham's metalworkers access to much wider markets, allowing them to diversify away from lower-skilled trades producing basic goods for local sale, towards a broader range of specialist, higher-skilled and more lucrative activities.[48]

Industrial Revolution

Birmingham's explosive industrial expansion started earlier than that of the textile-manufacturing towns of the North of England,[60] and was driven by different factors. Instead of the economies of scale of a low-paid, unskilled workforce producing a single bulk commodity such as cotton or wool in large, mechanised units of production, Birmingham's industrial development was built on the adaptability and creativity of a highly paid workforce with a strong division of labour, practising a broad variety of skilled specialist trades and producing a constantly diversifying range of products, in a highly entrepreneurial economy of small, often self-owned workshops.[61] This led to exceptional levels of inventiveness: between 1760 and 1850 – the core years of the Industrial Revolution – Birmingham residents registered over three times as many patents as those of any other British town or city.[62]

Most significant, however, was the development in 1776 of the industrial steam engine by James Watt and Matthew Boulton.[75] Freeing for the first time the manufacturing capacity of human society from the limited availability of hand, water and animal power, this was arguably the pivotal moment of the entire industrial revolution and a key factor in the worldwide increases in productivity that would follow over the following century.[76]

Regency and Victorian

Birmingham rose to national political prominence in the campaign for political reform in the early 19th century, with Thomas Attwood and the Birmingham Political Union bringing the country to the brink of civil war during the Days of May that preceded the passing of the Great Reform Act in 1832.[77] The Union's meetings on Newhall Hill in 1831 and 1832 were the largest political assemblies Britain had ever seen.[78]Lord Durham, who drafted the Act, wrote that "the country owed Reform to Birmingham, and its salvation from revolution".[79] This reputation for having "shaken the fabric of privilege to its base" in 1832 led John Bright to make Birmingham the platform for his successful campaign for the Second Reform Act of 1867, which extended voting rights to the urban working class.[80]

By the 1820s, an extensive canal system had been constructed, giving greater access to natural resources and fuel for industries. During the Victorian era, the population of Birmingham grew rapidly to well over half a million[84] and Birmingham became the second largest population centre in England. Birmingham was granted city status in 1889 by Queen Victoria.[85]Joseph Chamberlain, mayor of Birmingham and later an MP, and his son Neville Chamberlain, who was Lord Mayor of Birmingham and later the British Prime Minister, are two of the most well-known political figures who have lived in Birmingham. The city established its own university in 1900.[86]

Aftermath of the bomb attack on the Mulberry Bush Pub during the pub bombings of 1974

The city was extensively redeveloped during the 1950s and 1960s.[91] This included the construction of large tower block estates, such as Castle Vale. The Bull Ring was reconstructed and New Street station was redeveloped. In the decades following World War II, the ethnic makeup of Birmingham changed significantly, as it received waves of immigration from the Commonwealth of Nations and beyond.[92] The city's population peaked in 1951 at 1,113,000 residents.[84]

21 people were killed and 182 were injured in a series of bomb attacks in 1974, thought to be carried out by the Provisional IRA. The bombings were the worst terror attacks in Great Britain up until the 2005 London bombings[93] and consisted of bombs being planted in two pubs in Central Birmingham. Six men were convicted, who became known later as the Birmingham Six and sentenced to life imprisonment, who were acquitted after 16 years by the Court of Appeal. The convictions are now considered one of the worst British miscarriages of justice in recent times. The true perpetrators of the attacks are yet to be arrested.[94][95][96]

The West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, which was responsible for the Birmingham Six investigations, attracted further controversy after other convictions were questioned, and was closed down in 1989. Around 40 prosecutions collapsed due to malpractice in the 1980s, and a further 60 convictions have since been quashed, mostly because of tampering with suspects' statements, to add in 'confessions'. Many cases also depended on 'Supergrass' evidence which has since been found to be highly unreliable.[97] Some of those wrongfully convicted alleged torture, including use of a suffocation technique known as "plastic bagging".[98]

West Midlands Police had two serious firearms incidents, in 1980 and 1985. In 1980, David Pagett held his pregnant girlfriend as hostage while resisting arrest at flats in Rubery. Officers returned fire, and shot her.[99] Police had initially tried to claim that Pagett has shot her, but it became clear that it was police bullets that had caused her death. In 1985, John Shorthouse was arrested at his home in Kings Norton by West Midlands police for questioning about armed robberies in South Wales. His home was then searched. His five-year-old son, John, was shot by police searching under the child's bed. An internal inquiry was held, and as a result, use of firearms was restricted to a specialised and trained unit.[100]

Birmingham remained by far Britain's most prosperous provincial city as late as the 1970s,[101] with household incomes exceeding even those of London and the South East,[102] but its economic diversity and capacity for regeneration declined in the decades that followed World War II as Central Government sought to restrict the city's growth and disperse industry and population to the stagnating areas of Wales and Northern England.[103] These measures hindered "the natural self-regeneration of businesses in Birmingham, leaving it top-heavy with the old and infirm",[104] and the city became increasingly dependent on the motor industry. The recession of the early 1980s saw Birmingham's economy collapse, with unprecedented levels of unemployment and outbreaks of social unrest in inner-city districts.[105]